One of my favorite pieces of transit-related design is this limited-edition New York City Subway poster featuring the signs of all 468 of the system's stations. It's a simple design, but it looks so very cool due in part to the sheer scale of it.

The scale of the New York City Subway is unrivaled, especially in the United States. No other system could come close to being the basis of such a piece, but it did get me thinking.

The Washington Metro, the system I use every day, is the U.S.' second-place subway system in several respects. It's the second-busiest in terms of ridership, and second longest in overall length (as well as third in total number of stations).

What it does have, though, is a very recognizable design. From the beginning, the system was built to be iconic--the waffle vaults of the underground stations still impress me, even after thousands of rides--and one of my favorite features of the system's design are the pylons outside each station entrance.

While the Washington Metro has just one-fifth the stations that New York has (91 in total, with six more under construction), with how recognizable these pylons are, I figured it just may make for a cool poster of its own.

Compared to my previous projects, it was a relatively simple undertaking, having seen so many pylons in my day, and because WMATA conveniently makes their design guidelines publicly available.

What resulted did turn out pretty cool. Because a Metro station can serve anywhere from one to five lines, when sorted alphabetically there is a pretty diverse arrangement of colors and color combinations.

While it wasn't a big enough undertaking to warrant a full project page, I liked it enough to put up a version for sale on my store, if you would like a print. See the link below to check it out.